WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. >> ­­She is the daughter of a civil rights activist and professor who took her to see Martin Luther King Jr. during the March on Washington. She is the granddaughter of a black minister who tended to a faithful flock in rural North Carolina. She is the great-granddaughter of a black man born at the start of the Civil War and who died in 1946 — two years before she was born.

But now, the 66-year-old is standing before a weather-worn tombstone with a spire taller than her in a graveyard marinating in an early morning mist. There is a hand carved into the marker’s side with its finger pointing upward and the words “At Rest” etched below.

Fay Hauser-Price knows the name on the stone because it’s her name, too. She got his light green eyes but not his white skin. She thinks she got some of his ambition. He certainly gave her a lot of internal conflict about what is and what could be.

His name was Theophilus Christian Hauser. He was her great-great-grandfather who had three children by her great-great-grandmother — a house slave. He owned at least a dozen other slaves too.

“He wasn’t the only one,” she said softly in the quiet of the cemetery. “Not the worst one. And not the last one.”

‘Evidence of the past’

Hauser-Price goes to a family reunion in this lush area outside Winston-Salem, N.C., most every year. In July, the Hauser line of blacks from Theophilus and his house slave, Bethania Hauser Russell, will celebrate their 100th reunion.

But every five years, the greater Hauser family has their reunion as well and it fell on Father’s Day weekend. Hauser-Price had never been to it before and, for the past several reunions, it had been a largely white affair.

Her father, Charles Hauser, went in 2000 to the large reunion but didn’t attend others. The actress decided this year she wanted to attend to learn more about T.C. — as she called him — while also shooting footage for a possible documentary. She also thought it was important to remind the larger Hauser family that the black strand of the family lay claim to the same name.

Of about 80 Hausers at the reunion, she was one of only three black Hausers present.

“I think what I bring to it is the evidence of the past,” she said. “That’s what I hope to do to help open the conversation about race.”

When she arrived Thursday for the first day of the reunion, that topic was already on people’s minds. Just four hours south of Winston-Salem, where Hausers had gathered at the Village Inn Events Center, the nine blacks killed in Charleston at a historic African-American church dominated the news.

Several white Hauser family members said the shooter was mentally ill, despite evidence on social media sites and interviews with his friends that indicated racist beliefs. A manifesto of racist writings by the alleged shooter was discovered online Saturday.

Wallace Hooser — the name pronunciations and spellings vary based on geography and, in many cases, race — said it was tragic.

The 70-year-old came from Texas and said his line of the Hauser family left North Carolina because of the slavery issue. He said his grandchildren are mixed race and that the nation is still grappling with the issue.

But he said slavery, racism and discrimination are neither unique to the United States nor unique in historical context. He said it’s a product of human nature.

“Once something starts going, most people are sheep, and they’re not going to go against it,” Hooser said. “It’s like water. Water will find the path of least resistance. You can stop water, but it’s easier to go with the flow.”

Sharing stories

Hauser-Price, who lives in Van Nuys and is an actress best known for her work in “Roots: The Next Generations” and the soap opera “The Young and the Restless,” remembered going to segregated schools up through eighth grade in North Carolina before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Brown v. Board of Education.

“I remember what it was like to go to the movie theater and have to enter through the outside stairs and sit in our place in the balcony. I remember going into town and not being able to try on clothes at stores,” she said. “I remember how we moved from South Carolina after the Ku Klux Klan threatened to burn a cross on our lawn but didn’t because they got the wrong address.”

She said she hoped at the reunion to be able to share stories with her cousins and to learn from their experiences as well.

Rollie Hauser, president of the reunion organizing committee, met Hauser-Price’s father, Charlie Hauser, in 2000 at the greater Hauser family reunion.

Her father, a former state lawmaker who made headlines for fighting to desegregate bus services, left a big impression on him and he grew close to Hauser-Price in recent years as she began to ask more about her great-great-grandfather.

“I saw him double down on the work that needed to be done — the organizational and educational work needed to be done,” she said of her father. “He was afraid for me and my mom, in particular, in terms of safety and marching for voting rights.”

Rollie Hauser, 72, of Chico and a retired meteorologist, said the slavery issue coupled with learning about the slave-owning Theophilus Hauser wasn’t an unusual circumstance at the time.

“All I know is, I’m glad I didn’t live then,” he said.

Charleston shooting

Saturday was a travel day for the Hauser family reunion. There was time spent in historic Old Salem — including a tour of the old Moravian Church that was an all-black congregation.

The Hausers, who came from Germany, didn’t originally buy into slavery, but Bethania historian Mark Farnsworth said as society pressures grew, the church began to mold to societal norms of the time.

In 2006, the Moravian Church issued a formal apology for its role in slavery.

Farnsworth said those are steps, but in the wake of the Charleston shooting, he said, there is more work to be done.

“The past is painful, but racism is still around,” he said. “It hasn’t gone away.”

The tour of the sites also included a visit to the historic Horne Creek Living Historical Farm, where Hauser-Price saw some photos of her great-great-grandfather posing in front of the plantation house cradling a rifle.

“There’s T.C.,” she said, taking a picture and video of the blurry black-and-white image.

Aboard the bus in the sweltering humidity, the Hausers posed for family photos — with Hauser-Price sitting near the front between two cousins.

Then the bus boarded and they headed to Bethania — the city that bore her great-great-grandmother’s name.

But the tour didn’t include a stop at the African-American cemetery where her grandfather and great-grandfather were buried.

She decided to go to those early in the morning before the larger tour started.

As she walked through the gravestones, her shoes leaving a light trail of footprints between Daniel Hauser, her grandfather who used to give her rides on the mule cart as a child, and her great-grandfather Alexander Hauser, she stopped and listened to the quiet.

She put her hand on the tombstone of Alexander Hauser and felt the uneven surface and wondered what went through his mind. She knew he identified with T.C. and the two had a close relationship. She wondered what his life was like and how he felt about his father.

“I guess I’m not expecting all the answers,” she said. “But I think as I and we all move forward in this 21st century, we acknowledge that I and others stand as a representative — as a mixed race representative of the country and how that occurred and how change is happening and what the consequence of that change is.”

Hauser-Price thinks about what could be — and lives her life between those worlds.

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